BOOK EXCERPT: Eat Pray Love, Elizabeth Gilbert

Then he went on to explain in a mixture of English, Italian and hand gestures, that every city has a single word that defines it, that identifies most people who live there. If you could read people’s thoughts as they were passing you on the streets of any given place you would discover that most of them are thinking that same thought. Whatever that majority thought might be- that is the word of the city. And if your personal word does not match the word of the city then you don’t really belong there.

Giulio asked, ‘What’s the word in New York City?”

I thought about this for a moment, then decided. “It’s a verb, of course. I think it’s ACHIEVE.”

(Which is subtly but significantly different from the word in Los Angeles, I believe which is also a verb: SUCCEED. Later, I will share this whole theory with my Swedish friend Sofie, and she will offer her opinion that the word on the streets of Stockholm is CONFORM, which depresses both of us.)

I asked Guilio, “What’s the word in Naples?” He knows the south of Italy well.

“FIGHT”, he decides. “What was the word in your family when you were growing up?”

That one was difficult. I was trying to think of a single word that somehow combines both FRUGAL and IRREVERENT. But Guilio was already on the next and most obvious question: “What’s your word?”